Margaret Atwood sat down recently with Michael Enright at an event for supporters of the Literary Review of Canada. For more than a half-hour, they talked about the digital world, the origins of The Handmaid’s Tale, the early days on the book promotion circuit, and even garter belts. These are excerpts from their conversation.
Michael Enright: You wrote a wonderful essay, many wonderful essays, but one of them you called “Three Mortifications”.
Margaret Atwood: Oh, yes.
Enright: And in it you talked about how difficult it was early in your career when you went to book signings. Tell me what happened in the men’s socks and underwear department of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Edmonton.
Atwood: Well, it was my first novel and my first public book signing, and it was the publicist’s first week on the job. It was Edmonton and it was 1969. So, for some reason, she thought it would be a good idea to...
Margaret Atwood is the author of many novels, poetry collections, children’s books, graphic novels, and works of non-fiction.
Michael Enright was the host of The Sunday Edition and The Enright Files on CBC Radio One from 2000 to 2020.
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